


Illuminations

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Drama, First Times, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 01:27:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Comtemplations on light.  Hopeless romance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Illuminations

**Author's Note:**

> This story was first published in Love and Guns 7 in May of 1999. I now dedicate it to M. B. in Brooklyn, N.Y.

## Illuminations

by J M Griffin

Author's disclaimer: Not for profit, but for love. 

* * *

ILLUMINATIONS  
By J. M. Griffin 

\--- Embracing the Light --- 

He woke very early some mornings, to an inner alarm that went off a bit before dawn. So then he would watch the first rays of light peek in the windows and venture across the foot of the bed. Holding Blair, Jim waited for that first shaft of light to creep up and caress his lover's naked shoulder. The light was a lover's touch, he thought sometimes it was his own touch, gently stroking that fine skin, warming away the chill left by the night air. 

Thinking back, Jim could pinpoint the exact moment when he realized how cold and lonely his life was. That year at the military academy in New Mexico. The year that should have been his senior year in Cascade. Prom year, the year to say goodbye, the last year to be a kid. His father's wrath had shortchanged him and he'd been sent away to be all alone. He'd never felt so bereft in all his life as he did those nine months banished to sunny New Mexico. 

He'd woken up early one morning, on his narrow cadet bunk, not having slept very well to begin with, and had wondered if it would always be this way. If he'd always be alone. He'd known, even then, he was considered a "lone wolf," too singular to be a truly fine leader, though he excelled in what they called the "military art." Making war came easy. Being alone, for all his loner qualities, did not. 

During his years in the army, he had been surrounded by people, but even then, despite the hordes of men that made up his squad, company and platoon, he'd been a lonely man. During those eighteen months in Peru, he'd given up hope. He'd wished to die rather than be so isolated and alone. But of course he hadn't. Incacha had made sure of that. 

One still night, as they sat beneath a moon so full and bright it hurt Jim's Sentinel eyes, Incacha had looked at him and said. "He watches this same Hunter's moon." 

"Who?" he'd asked. 

"The wolf." At the time Jim had thought he was the wolf. He had not even considered Incacha was talking about someone else, someone he would meet one day in a stuffy university storage room back in Cascade, Washington. 

"Jim?" Blair was watching him, now. "What are you looking at, love?" 

"Nothing," Jim said. And for once his Guide didn't push. 

They were both much better knowing what to do and when these days. Blair seemed to know when to push and when to pull back. Jim was learning that there were times when he had to talk... and times when he must listen. Gabe had said it correctly. "Listen to the whispers of your own heart." 

His heart had told him to move toward the light. But the light of the sun burned, didn't it? 

Jim remembered the first time they made love. It had been a glaringly bright afternoon and he'd been glad to get to the haven of the loft, cool wash cloth on his brow. Blair had leaned over him replacing the cloth, his mane of curls backlit by the afternoon sun slanting through the windows and Jim had reached up slid his hand into that unearthly glow. He'd brought Blair's face even closer to his own and kissed him and in doing so, he thought maybe he'd been singed by the heat contained in those lips, those eyes. Blair was all passion and warmth; his skin as Jim disrobed him, practically incandescence, glistening with a fine sheen of perspiration. Like when it rained and the sun was still shining. Jim had been entranced. Enthralled. Enslaved. 

Forever after, a worshiper of the sun. 

He had dipped his head toward Blair's burgeoning sex and thought, "Yang to my yin." And stopped, so very startled by the errant thought. Blair had not been thinking, at least not coherently, and had begged, "Don't stop, don't stop." How could Jim deny such a plea from this, his very own Apollo? He had run his tongue along that fine flesh and thought this was what it felt like to dance with death, to run a chariot so close to the sun's radiance your entire life became flame. He was Phaeton, that afternoon, but he discovered in the bright burst of the climax that ripped through his body, that this sun would not, after all, burn him to death. Instead, it would heal him of all his loneliness. 

Jim blinked awake again and it was hours later. Blair was awake, propped against a myriad of pillows, glasses perched on his face, both arms wrapped round his bigger lover, snugging Jim close. Blair was gazing out the window and his face was as bright as the sun. 

\--- Snaring the Moon --- 

The diving platform jutted out far over the lake, illuminated bright as day by the huge, silvery-blue moon. Blair could see it all through the bedroom window of the cabin where he and Jim were staying. He looked down at his lover, sprawled out beside him on the bed and reached out to run a hand lightly along the bigger man's rounded shoulder. Exhaling a long sigh of contentment, Blair smiled gently. Jim was very tired, but even if he hadn't been, it was not likely Blair would have woken him with such a soft caress. They were that easy with each other these days. 

A hint of sunburn graced that smooth shoulder, summoning for Blair a pleasing memory of Jim standing on that diving platform, leaping out and up then descending to knife cleanly into the sparkling water. It had been a sight to behold, that performance. Blair had not been the only one to watch and appreciate. Now, he found himself musing on how beautiful Jim would look out on that platform tonight the moonlight haloing his sculpted body. Jim would be a marble statue, cool and almost unearthly in his beauty. 

That magnificent body. Blair had caught a glimpse of it the day they had met. The wide, sloping shoulders, the vulnerable set of the man's back, had called out to him in a way nothing else in his life ever had. After his first encounter with Jim at the hospital, Blair had gone to his office to listen to a driving beat, trying to drown out the hammering in his own chest. Sure, he'd told Jim to relax, but he'd been the one whose heart was beating ninety to nothing. He'd known then, in his heart of hearts not that Jim was the living embodiment of his field of study but that he was _it._ The one. The person he'd been waiting for all his life. 

Jim was the other half of his soul, the yin to his yang. Yes, it was kind of funny that his big, macho, buff lover was so very yin. So dark, deep, receptive and abyssal. Yin was the winds, storm clouds and waves. Yin was the tiger even, Blair chuckled to himself at the thought. Yep, a tiger was close enough to a panther to support his hypothesis. Of course, there could be no yin without yang, no yang without yin. Yin and the yang the invisible inside, the visible outside. Together they were a seamless web of unbroken movement and change. 

But it hadn't always been this way. Blair grimaced and had to keep his hand from tightening on Jim's arm as he remembered that horrible academic year, the one that had ended with him floating in a fountain and Jim floating in an ancient sensory deprivation tank in Peru. They had come back from their trip changed just the same and entirely different. They pretended for a while, pretended they could just go back to their same old lives. But Jim was too glad Blair was alive and Blair was too glad it was all over with. They had danced around their feelings for months and then, one bright afternoon, had fallen into each others arms. 

That night, Blair had woken to the moonlight streaming into the loft, falling across his body and Jim's where they lay still entwined on Jim's big bed. The milky light of the moon had made Jim seem unreal, almost ethereal. For a minute it had scared Blair, but then he realized Jim was like that. Underneath the brash, bold exterior, Jim hid an elusive, quick-silver soul. Most of their friends thought Blair was the flighty one, but in Blair's experience, Jim was the one easily frightened, easily pushed away, hard to grasp. Yet Blair had caught him a ray of moonlight in his hand. And he was determined to never let go. 

Now, Jim turned over on his side with a tiny murmur and for a moment Blair thought he would wake. But he didn't, only made a soft sound very similar to Blair's earlier sigh of contentment. Closing his eyes, Blair curled himself round his slumbering lover and fell fast asleep. 

Thus, the moon kept watch over the pair with her lazy eye until she gave over the safekeeping to her lover, the rising sun. 

* * *

End

 


End file.
